Florida Condo Reserve Fund Relief: HB 913 Explained

Florida gave condo associations a narrow, conditional break on reserve funding. CS/CS/HB 913 (2025) was signed in June 2025 and took effect July 1, 2025. It lets a qualifying unit-owner-controlled association temporarily pause or reduce reserve contributions for up to two consecutive annual budgets, and it raised the default reserve threshold from $10,000 to $25,000.

This is educational information, not legal advice for your building. Confirm how the statute applies to your association with a Florida community-association attorney.

Why the relief exists

The relief exists because the post-Surfside reforms worked, and owners could not afford the bill. The June 2021 collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside killed 98 people. The legislature responded with SB 4-D (2022) and SB 154 (2023).

Those laws created the milestone inspection and the Structural Integrity Reserve Study, and they ended the annual reserve waiver for structural components. Buildings that had waived reserves for decades suddenly had to catch up. Owners got five- and six-figure special assessments.

HB 913 was the 2025 legislature’s answer. For the full Florida timeline — milestone deadlines, SIRS scope, HB 1021 disclosure — see our Florida condo laws 2026 explainer and the companion guide to the Structural Integrity Reserve Study. This page covers HB 913 and the reserve relief only.

The two-year reserve pause — exactly who qualifies

The pause lives in Fla. Stat. § 718.112(2)(f)2.e., inside Chapter 718, and every condition has to be met. Miss one and the pause is not authorized. A board that pauses anyway has a fiduciary problem, not a paperwork problem.

The statutory conditions:

1. A recent milestone inspection. The association must have completed a milestone inspection under Fla. Stat. § 553.899 within the previous two calendar years.
2. A majority of the total voting interests. Approval must come from a majority of all voting interests in the association — not a majority of a quorum, and not a board vote.
3. A purpose limit. The paused money must fund repairs recommended by the milestone inspection. This is not a general dues-relief tool.
4. A duration limit. No more than two consecutive annual budgets.
5. A sunset. The pause applies only to a budget adopted on or before December 31, 2028.
6. A new study on the way out. An association that pauses must have a structural integrity reserve study performed before it resumes reserve contributions, to determine funding needs and recommend a plan.

Some associations are excluded outright. The provision does not apply to developer-controlled associations, associations where nondeveloper owners have been in control for less than one year, or associations controlled by bulk assignees or bulk buyers. Cooperatives have a parallel provision in Chapter 719.

One nuance worth putting to your attorney: the pause sits in the general reserve paragraph, and its text is not expressly limited to SIRS components. Non-SIRS reserves could already be reduced by owner vote under § 718.112(2)(f)2.b., so the practical effect is on structural reserves. Get a written opinion before you rely on a broader reading.

There is a separate, different pause. If a local building official determines the entire building is uninhabitable due to a natural emergency, § 718.112(2)(f)2.d. lets the board pause reserves by board vote alone, and spend existing reserve funds to make the building habitable again. That is a storm provision, not the milestone provision.

The $25,000 threshold change

HB 913 raised the default reserve threshold from $10,000 to $25,000. Under § 718.112(2)(f)2.a., an association must reserve for any item with a deferred maintenance expense or replacement cost that exceeds $25,000, or the inflation-adjusted amount, whichever is greater. The same $25,000 figure now governs the catch-all component in the SIRS list at § 718.112(2)(g)1.h.

In practice, fewer components fall into mandatory reserves. Items in the $10,000 to $25,000 band — a pump station, a small generator, a stretch of railing — no longer trigger a required reserve account on their own. That narrows the SIRS and lowers the required annual contribution.

The inflation adjustment. The Division of Florida Condominiums, Timeshares, and Mobile Homes at the Florida DBPR must adjust the $25,000 threshold annually using the Consumer Price Index released each January. Under § 718.112(2)(f)6., the Division must post the adjusted figure on its website by February 1, 2026 and annually after that. Check the posted number before your budget meeting — the statutory $25,000 is a floor, not the current figure.

The carve-out that catches boards. Roof replacement, building painting, and pavement resurfacing must still be reserved for regardless of cost. The $25,000 threshold never applies to them. A board that treats the higher threshold as blanket relief on roofing reserves has misread the statute.

Before and after HB 913

	Before HB 913	After HB 913 (from July 1, 2025)
Reserve waivers	Owners of an association required to obtain a SIRS could not vote to provide no or less reserves for SIRS components in budgets adopted on or after Dec. 31, 2024	Unchanged — the waiver ban stands
Reserve / SIRS threshold	Items over $10,000	Items over $25,000, adjusted annually for inflation by the Division; roof, painting, and paving still reserved regardless of cost
Pause option	None, except board pause when a building is declared uninhabitable after a natural emergency	Up to two consecutive annual budgets, by majority of total voting interests, after a milestone inspection in the previous two calendar years, for budgets adopted on or before Dec. 31, 2028
Initial SIRS deadline	December 31, 2024	December 31, 2025; associations with a milestone inspection due on or before Dec. 31, 2026 may complete both together, but never after Dec. 31, 2026

The trap: Florida relief does not move the federal floor

Pausing reserves under Florida law does nothing to help your building satisfy Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac project-eligibility rules. These are separate standards written by federal mortgage investors. The Florida legislature does not set them, and a valid statutory pause is not a defense.

The federal bar is moving the other way. Fannie Mae’s Lender Letter LL-2026-03 raises the minimum replacement reserve allocation from 10% to 15% of annual budgeted assessment income, for loan applications dated on or after January 4, 2027. Freddie Mac issued matching guidance.

There is one exception, and it does not help a paused association. A project funding at the highest recommended level in a reserve study completed or updated within the last three years is not held to the flat 15%. A baseline or bare-minimum funding model does not qualify.

The review path is tightening too. The streamlined Limited Review category is retired in favor of Full Review for loan applications dated on or after August 3, 2026. More Florida buildings will get a full look at their budget, their reserves, and their deferred maintenance.

The starting point is already weak. Association Reserves, which has prepared more than 100,000 reserve studies, finds 34% of the associations in its client base under 30% funded — the “weak” band. The firm cautions that this describes its own clients, not a statistically representative national sample, so treat it as a directional benchmark.

Florida associations have a specific reason to start low. For decades state law let owners vote every year to waive reserve funding entirely, so many buildings arrived at the SIRS era with very little saved. The catch-up is what the milestone and SIRS rules put on paper.

Here is the consequence in plain terms. A Florida association that votes to pause can find its building classified non-warrantable, which blocks conventional financing for every buyer in the building. Sale prices fall to what cash buyers will pay. Two years of relief bought at the cost of an unsellable building is a bad trade for most associations. Before voting, read how the review actually works in our guide to Fannie Mae condo approval.

How a board should decide

Use the pause to pay for a repair, not to avoid a dues increase. That single line resolves most board debates about HB 913.

The pause makes sense when the milestone inspection identified urgent structural work, the association has a funded plan to perform it, and redirecting reserve contributions for a defined period is the difference between starting the repair now and starting it a year late. Deferring a future roof replacement to fix a failing structural slab today is defensible. That is the trade the statute contemplates.

The pause does not make sense when the real motive is keeping monthly dues flat, when there is no active repair project the money will fund, when the association is already below 30% funded, or when owners are actively selling and refinancing. In that last case, the pause creates a financing problem that outlasts the two years of relief.

Run the arithmetic before the vote. Model your reserve balance with and without the pause using our reserve fund calculator, and check the result against the 15% federal floor that arrives in January 2027. If the paused budget lands under it, you are choosing lower dues over marketability.

The boards we see regret a funding decision are almost always the ones that voted on the monthly-dues number and never modeled what the balance sheet looked like three years out.

What owners should ask before voting

The pause requires a majority of the total voting interests, so it cannot pass without owners. Ask these before you mark a ballot:

1. What repair does this fund? Ask for the specific milestone inspection recommendation and the contractor’s scope and price.
2. When was our milestone inspection completed? If it falls outside the previous two calendar years, the association does not qualify. See our Florida milestone inspection guide for how the inspection and its phases work.
3. What is our current percent funded? Get the number from the most recent reserve study, not from a board summary.
4. What does the balance look like in year three? Ask for the projection after the pause ends and contributions resume.
5. Who pays for the new SIRS? The statute requires one before contributions resume. That cost is real and it is coming.
6. Have we asked our lender contacts about warrantability? A board should get this in writing before it puts the question to owners.
7. What is the alternative? Compare the pause against a special assessment, an association loan, or a line of credit — all of which § 718.112(2)(f)2.c. expressly permits with a majority vote of the total voting interests.
8. Has counsel reviewed the resolution? A Florida community-association attorney should confirm each statutory condition is documented before the vote, not after.

Bottom line

HB 913 is real relief, but it is narrow, conditional, and temporary. It gives a board with a recent milestone inspection and an urgent repair a legal way to redirect two budget years of reserve contributions to the work that matters most.

It does not lower the amount your building ultimately owes, and it does not move the federal reserve floor arriving in January 2027. Associations that treat the pause as a repair-financing tool will be fine. Associations that treat it as a way to keep dues flat will spend the relief and then discover their owners cannot sell.